Lemon Tart
A baked lemon curd set entirely by egg, in a blind-baked shell, with no starch thickener at all.
Makes 1 9-inch tart · Prep 20 min · Bake 20 min
Ingredients
Shell
- 1 Sweet tart shell, blind-baked — see the Sweet Tart Shell recipe — bake it slightly less than fully, since it goes back in the oven
Filling
- 4 Eggs
- 1 cup Granulated sugar
- 1 tbsp Lemon zest
- 2/3 cup Lemon juice — from about 4 lemons
- 1/3 cup Butter, melted
Instructions
Prep
- Heat the oven to 150°C (300°F). (Tip: Noticeably lower than most bakes in this book — a starch-free egg filling has almost no margin against overheating.)
Filling
- Whisk the eggs and sugar together until smooth, then whisk in the lemon zest, lemon juice, and melted butter until fully combined.
- Strain through a fine sieve into a jug to catch the zest and any bits of cooked egg white from the whisking. (Tip: Straining is what gives this the smooth, glassy set a good lemon tart is known for.)
Bake
- Pour into the blind-baked shell and bake until the edges are set but the centre still jiggles like a not-quite-set jelly when the pan is nudged. (Tip: Pull it looking underdone. It firms up entirely as it cools — a filling that looks fully set in the oven has already gone past the point of a smooth curd.)
Cool
- Cool completely at room temperature, then chill before slicing.
Tips
- Filling turned grainy: Overbaked. Without starch to buffer them, the eggs curdled once they passed their setting point. There's no fixing a baked batch, but next time pull it earlier — trust the jiggle test over the clock.
- Fresh lemon juice only: Bottled juice lacks the aromatic oils the zest brings and tends to taste flatter and more purely sour — worth juicing the lemons you zested rather than reaching for a bottle.